Alternative Abraham Lincoln Reads

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Two hundred years have passed since his birth and Abraham Lincoln is still making headlines. Recently trumpeted as Barack Obama’s personal hero, the media has heralded the new President’s cabinet as a recreation of Lincoln’s legendary 1861 cabinet dubbed The Team of Rivals by Doris K Goodwin.

Lincoln formed “the most unusual cabinet in history” by drawing together opponents such as William H Seward, Salmon P Chase and Edward Bates.” Obama’s appointments include former rivals Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Tom Vilsack. However, ‘Honest’ Abe Lincoln has been a publisher’s dream for nearly two centuries and not always for his abolitionist politics or sensationalized assassination. Read on for a few lesser known facts, 19th century gossip and of course, good reads….

Bodysnatching

A gang of American counterfeiters received the strongest ever penalty for grave robbing after a botched attempt to steal the former President’s body and hold it hostage for $200,000. Bonnie Stahlman Speer’s The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijackdepicts how the Secret Service intercepted the robbers at Lincoln’s tomb on Election Day 1876, where they planned to exhume Lincoln’s coffin and smuggle it to Indiana in a covered wagon. The gang members, who each faced a year in prison, masterminded the plot several years earlier but were forced to flee after a local brothel hostess got wind of the plan. John Carroll Power’s 1898 representation of the scheme in History of an Attempt to Steal the Body of Abraham Lincoln has since become a highly prized collectible book.

Ghostly Reappearance

The late President was supposedly captured on film from beyond the grave. Nineteenth century “spirit photographer” William H Mumler purportedly photographed Lincoln’s ghost, which appears standing behind Mary Todd Lincoln in one of her later portraits. Although the famed photo is now considered a hoax, the image became the focus of a legal battle in 1869 in which Mumler was accused of fraud. Melvyn Willin investigates the controversial picture in Ghosts Caught on Film.

Syphilis?

Historians document Lincoln as having suffered from malaria, frostbite, smallpox and depression, however, the assertion that he had syphilis by biographer William Henry Herndon, his legal partner of nearly 18 years, triggered huge controversy. The 1889 publication of Herndon’s Life of Lincoln claims that the former President contracted the disease in 1835 after a “devilish passion” with a girl in Beardstown. Now a valuable collector’s item, the book challenged Lincoln’s reverential public persona and used groundbreaking biographical techniques, including firsthand interviews with Mary Todd and many others. Gore Vidal also comically references the syphilis question in Lincoln, his epic work of historical fiction centering on the 16th President.

Fugitive from the law

James Swanson’s Manhunt is one of the finest historical Lincoln books to emerge in recent years. It deals with the 12-day search for Confederate die-hard John Wilkes Booth. It reads like a thriller and reveals Booth’s mixture of luck, skill, cunning and bravado that ensured his remained at large for an incredible length of time. Killing the president proofed remarkably easy for the famous actor but avoiding the authorities proved a huge challenge.